39% of the respondents of an opinion poll (carried out in the municipality of Bălți and two suburban settlements) believe the leader of the Political Party “Our Party” Renato Usatîi should be the mayor of Bălți municipality. Over two thirds of those polled said that Renato Usatîi’s decision to quit as mayor was bad and this generated a wave of disappointment, sadness and concern. The pre-electoral survey was conducted by the sociological research company [imas].
[imas] director general Doru Petruţi in a news conference at IPN said the poll was carried out in September and represents a short sociopolitical diagnosis of the situation in the municipality of Bălți after the resignation of Renato Usatîi as mayor.
“We asked the participants in the pol who they consider is the most suitable person for the post of mayor of Bălți municipality. I note that this was an open question. The respondents weren’t given any response variant and the operators put down the answer provided by those polled. According to these rankings, despite the made announcements, Renato Usatîi ranks first with 39% of the options. Another 6.5% of those surveyed mentioned Nicolae Grigorișin, 2.9% - Alexandr Nesterovschi, 2.9% - Boris Marcoci, 1.3% - Alina Spataru. Surely, some of the respondents named also other locals they know,” said Doru Petruți. At the same time, almost 7% said that no person is suitable, while 35% avoided giving an answer or didn’t know who to mention.
53% of those interviewed believe Renato Usatîi should run again for the post of mayor of Bălți municipality. 12% consider Usatîi should better support a candidate for mayor, while one in four inhabitants of the municipality prefers Renato Usatîi not to become involved at all in the elections that will follow.
Asked about the new local elections of November 21, 51% of the respondents said that they know who they will vote for and are very determined to confirm their voting intention. Another 21% said they are rather decided and have particular preferences, while about 15% said they are undecided as to their participation in elections.
The research authors compiled a list with the possible candidates. Meanwhile, some of the names were confirmed. These are persons known at the local level, who were chosen according to their famousness. Doru Petruți said the poll included those whose popularity and confidence levels were measured.
“In this variant of measurement of the voting intention, Nicolae Grigorișin (independent) ranks first with almost 34%. Alexandr Nesterovschi (BECS) comes next with 7.7%. Boris Marcoci (PAS) has 6.7%, Alina Spataru (PPDA) – 4.5%, the candidate of Șor Party – 3.2%. We didn’t have names of persons representing this party, but according to our information, Șor Party has a candidate there. The percentage will be probably different. The rest of the persons gained less than 3%. It is noteworthy that we presented a particular list to the respondents and this list didn’t include Renato Usatîi, but 19.5% or almost 20% insisted on Renato Usatîi as their voting intention and didn’t accept to name someone else from this list. We see almost 17% of persons who said that they either will not vote or do not have an option at the moment,” noted the director of [imas].
The poll was conducted during September 7-24 and covered a sample of 803 persons. The respondents were questioned face to face both in Romanian and in Russian. The maxim sampling error is ±3.4%.
The survey was commissioned by TV Bălți channel.
